Universal Social Security: seven proposals, one flow of money

Income, corporate and other taxes are withheld by banks in real time and swept to the Direct Payment Fund. The central bank credits new money to the fund by a published rule: real growth above 2 percent, less one and a half times any inflation above target; when that number is negative, the fund holds money back and it leaves circulation. From 2036 the Social Security Trust Fund adds a draw. Out of the fund come the lean federal budget (a health public option with a catastrophic cap, disability care, defense, science, courts, and a fixed $1 trillion line that services and then retires the debt), the local essentials grant, the banks' fee and the children's trust deposits; everything else goes back through the banks to every person as a weekly deposit. Large companies deliver 2.5 percent of their value a year in non-voting shares, which banks hold for the Trust Fund until it owns a third of the market; anything above 30 percent is sold into foreign assets. Landowners pay the land value tax through their bank, three quarters to schools and a quarter to local government. Data centers pay 12 cents a kilowatt-hour into a power fund that pays household electric bills. Banks earn half a percent of everything they carry and must put half of their fee on the payment fund into new housing.

Nothing goes from the fund to a person except through a bank account in that person's name. New money follows the rule in statute and never exceeds real output growth less 2 percent; the dial turns down before anyone votes on it. The Trust Fund is pooled (no individual accounts, no inheritance), non-voting, and stops at a third of the U.S. market. Local money stays local: the land tax never enters the national fund. Housing works down the ladder: supportive homes with services first, then the shortage, then retrofits and regions. The models that run the system are open, auditable and overridable by people.

Winners: low- and middle-income households; retirees and people with disabilities, who keep at least today's benefit and pass it as the payment grows; people in care, trades and human services; small-business founders; banks that modernize; AI and technology companies, which get a known levy and a growing customer base instead of an open-ended fight; low-cost regions and data-center regions with cheap clean power.

Losers: payday lenders, collectors and overdraft fees (their customers have money); tax preparation (almost nobody files); billing middlemen; benefit bureaucracies; large passive fortunes and land speculators, who lose share and still grow; employers who relied on desperate workers; routine office and retail jobs, which are displaced and cushioned. A plan that claims to have no losers is hiding something.

Where the health catastrophic cap sits. Who is eligible, and when new arrivals join. Whether the deposit counts toward the $150,000 floor (modeled yes). How 401(k)s and pensions fit. Who covers the K-12 gap the land tax leaves. How fast the money dial may turn, and who can suspend it. The model still needs the mobility and education streams, transportation in the inflation model, and a proper 2 percent downside with displacement and without the growth. The risks we take seriously: market repricing on the day a permanent levy is announced; identity fraud when banks handle everything; data-center load that grows slower than assumed; zoning as the real housing bottleneck.